With his first solo album As You Were, not due out until October 6, Liam Gallagher promises fans will hear plenty of familiar material during his upcoming week of North American shows.
“We’re just going straight into the Oasis stuff,” Gallagher tells Billboard. “We start with ‘Rock and Roll Star,’ ‘Morning Glory, then we hit with new ones — ‘Wall Of Glass,’ then we do a bit of ‘Greedy Soul,’ ‘Bold’ and then we do another two Oasis, then some more new ones and then we end on two Oasis songs. So everyone’s getting value for their money.” And Gallagher, who’s been gigging in Europe, is happy to report that “the new ones are standing up against the Oasis ones. I thought they’d be a real big drag, but they’re not, man.”
Gallagher plays his first solo U.S. date on Sunday in Brooklyn, then has Lollapalooza shows on Aug. 2 and Aug. 3 in Chicago and plays at the Osheaga Festival on Aug. 5 in Montreal. He knows the audiences will be expecting Oasis material, and he’s happy to oblige.
“That’s fine with me,” he says. “I love Oasis and I love being compared to it ’cause I AM Oasis, I’m not trying to break away from the sound we had; In fact, I’m trying to recapture that sound ’cause that’s the sound I like and it suits my voice. I just think with it being my name it’s a little bit different. Plus I’ve had a little bit of time out” — three years since his post-Oasis band Beady Eye split up. “I think people have missed me. The reaction I’m getting from it is people want a new Liam Gallagher record.”
Fans would also like something new from Oasis, of course — or even a basic reunion, which failed to materialize despite rumors in conjunction Supersonic, last year’s insightful documentary about the band. Gallagher says he and brother Noel Gallagher, who’s High Flying Birds is currently opening for U2 in Europe, are not in touch at all and unlikely to do anything together in the near, or even far, future.
“The way I’m seeing it with Noel is he’s sort of washed his hands of the lot of it,” says Gallagher, who was particularly critical of his brother for not taking part in the One Love Manchester concert on June 4, though he did donate royalties from Oasis’ “Don’t Look Back In Anger” to charities in brothers’ home town. “He wants to get on and do his solo stuff, which is fine. I mean, I’m certainly not desperate to be back in a band with him, ’cause I think he’s a bit of a f–king… I don’t know what, but he’s lost himself, I think. It’s kind of beyond me and Noel now, isn’t it? It’s about something else.
“I mean, who knows? Anything could happen. But we’ve got to start talking first before we can start talking about a band. Right now I’m fine doing this.”
That said, Gallagher — who will be playing at Britain’s Reading and Leeds Festivals during August and has an nine-date North American swing planned for November along with plans to tour into 2018 — acknowledges that getting into a solo career has been a bit of an adjustment. “I never really wanted to do all this solo stuff,” he says, “but I guess it’s my last chance to really make music. It’s not something I really, really, really saw myself doing, but (after) Beady Eye there’s no point in starting a new band because it’s only going to get compared to Oasis. So I might as well do this solo thing, but it feels pretty natural, man.”